


Why Do the Shadows Breathe?

by Incy Little Spider (1ncylilspider)



Series: Flames Build and Overcome [3]
Category: Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Psychological Horror, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 22:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1ncylilspider/pseuds/Incy%20Little%20Spider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bubbles wakes in the middle night, knowing something's wrong. Hasn't she known for months that something is wrong? But is it too late to help? Is it too late to save her sister from the shadows that are overtaking her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Do the Shadows Breathe?

She awoke in the darkness, her blond hair a sweaty mess over her face. The darkness of her room enveloped her and the fear was strong and bitter in her chest, like poison at the back of her throat. Suddenly she was five years old again, her toys casting sinister shapes through the night, the stillness like a tomb around her.

Why had she woken so suddenly? She’d been wrenched out of her shadowy, unsettled dreamworld and into an even darker reality. But why? The air was quiet, but their was a strange taste and texture to it; almost alive with menace. The unease was thick, dark treacle, dripping down her veins. Before she knew what she was doing, she was pulling back the blankets and floating for the door. Something told her to keep her mouth shut, told her not to turn on the lights. There was something in the air; at the back of her throat and prickling over her skin.

Something was wrong. 

She checked the Professor’s room and Buttercup’s. Both were soundly asleep, tucked under their blankets. The voice told her that of course they were fine. Didn’t she already know whose bedroom would be empty? Didn’t she know the minute she opened her eyes and tasted that dark venom on her tongue?

Blossom. 

There was something wrong with Blossom.

How she had wanted to knock on her locked door these past months, find her there and talk to her. Talk to her about how withdrawn she was becoming, how cold her eyes were getting, how she seemed to be wasting the days away locked up in her room. 

Yet, with her hand at the doorknob and the strange candlelight flickering from within, she found she couldn’t do it. Like the black tendrils of someone’s iron will was pushing her away. _Leave her alone,_ it said. _This is not your business._

Sometimes she caught eyes with the Professor and Buttercup over the dining table or across the couch and she knew they’d tried as well. But something had pushed them back. The idea was too large, too terrifying to comprehend, so she allowed it to be taken from her mind. Blossom was just caught up in her schoolwork. Blossom was just adjusting to high-school. It was just Blossom’s hormones...

It wasn’t...it wasn’t something...there wasn’t something bigger here...something in this house...

But now, at Blossom’s slightly opened door in the crawling, pulsating darkness, all those excuses seemed to melt away. Something was wrong here. Something they'd all missed. Something she didn’t understand.

Inside, the room was empty, dark and cold. She looked at the expanse of smooth, blank wall over Blossom’s bed and there was a niggling at the back of her skull, a pinching uncomfortable sensation. She was missing something here. Shouldn’t there be....shouldn’t there be...?

A creak echoed behind her and she whipped around, gasping.

Blossom pushed the door open a little more as she slid into the room, eyes fixed on the floor, her mouth pulled down, not even seeming to notice her. Her skin was as pale as salt, there were dark bags under her eyes and her hair hung in untidy bangs over her face. She looked utterly exhausted.

“ _Blossom?_ ” she breathed and the shadows seemed to dance around her. “ _Blossom...where were you?_ ”

She looked up with her drooping eyelids, mouth opening wide like a lamb crying for milk. Even with her gaze fixed on her sister, she didn’t seem to be really looking at her. Her huge pink eyes were faraway. 

“ _Don’t worry_ ,” she whispered. “ _I was...just in the laboratory._ ” 

Bubbles swallowed thickly, her lungs constricted in her chest. She watched as those pink eyes slowly turned and fixed at the stretch of wall above her bed, with its plaster completely unblemished. 

“ _Why...why were you in...why were in the laboratory for?_ ”

Blossom didn’t say anything, looking dazed and unfocused, still staring unblinkingly at the wall. She started to think she wouldn’t even answer but then her lips moved and the words crept like the breath of a summer’s breeze in her ear. 

“ _Do you...do you ever think_...” she murmured, blinking slowly. “ _Do you think we got it wrong?_ ”

It was like they were still in a dream together. Just floating in the nothingness of the room, with the moonlight shining blue on their skin. 

“ _What?”_

Their breath drifted together, combining and mixing above their heads, shadows pulsing around them.

“ _When we were little...and we flew into the future...”_

Her words painted images through the darkness of the room, painted bleak landscapes and dead horizons over her mind’s eye. Red earth and orange sky, black torrents above her, cracks and pillars and sobbing, broken people. The pain and the agony and her own screams escaping her throat as the misery tore it’s daggers into her soul. They never talked about that day from so long ago. Not ever.

“ _Maybe...maybe it wasn’t...maybe Him didn’t do it...”_ Blossom was saying, not looking at her. Maybe she wasn’t even talking to her. Maybe she was talking to someone else.  

“ _What do you mean_?” and the fear was like bile in her throat, her eyes prickling, her heart pounding in her mouth; “ _Of course it was Him. Who else could’ve done it?”_

 _“Someone more powerful...”_ she said and the shadows were so alive around her, pulsing around her, wrapping its tendrils around her. _“Someone older...someone Him was...working for...someone we didn’t see...”_

Bubbles took a step back, feeling the panic crawling and swarming through her body. She looked around the room, where the walls and the ceilings were doused in that living blackness, swarming around her sister and making her pink eyes burn red and her white cheeks glow bright. There was something in her stare now, something almost heated, almost excited; her lips seemed to be curling upwards. There was something wrong here. Something very, very wrong.

“ _Maybe...maybe it was a hint of what’s to come...”_

The room was so hot...she hadn’t even noticed it. So hot...like burning fire. She swallowed again and felt the sweat slide down from her forehead. 

“ _Blossom...you’re scaring me...”_

She stared in response, her eyes going cold, the smile slipping away. The air was almost humming in her ears now, like a thousand angry bees. 

“ _What are you thinking? Someone more powerful then Him? Someone older? There’s no such thing...!”_

Her sister kept on staring at her and the smile was small and curling across her face. 

“ _Blossom?_ ” she said, because she knew now. She understood. All these months, she’d let her sister slip away, let her sister find something else, she’d left her sister to battle alone with this  _thing_ that was polluting her mind. They’d all let her walk into this dark place, where no-one else could follow her.

“ _Go to bed Bubbles,”_ she said and the contempt was almost dripping from her voice; “ _Don’t worry your little head over it.”_

They just stared at each other for what seemed like hours, the humming in the air like an electric scream in her mind. But now...there wasn’t just one iron will pushing her away. There were two currents beating down at her, it’s black pounding matter entwined with something glowing pink and strong. Together, the force of their will made her clutch at her head and almost cry out, feeling like their were knives stabbing into her brain.

_Leave us be, leave us be, leave us alone, go away from us, go away from us, go away..._

Her stomach shriveled and she gasped for air, flying for the door. Looking around, she got one last look at Blossom staring out at her, before the black tendrils engulfed her body and the door slammed shut at last.

Inside, the girl stared down at her hands and then looked slowly upwards, the room plunged into an eternal darkness that she half welcomed, half wanted to escape. She let her eyes fall closed, let herself drift in the nothingness and withdraw to the peace that welcomed her within. The thought came unridden into her mind like a stream of ice water through the heat; _I remember. They said we disappeared for fifty years. Where did we go? What happened?_

The answer came trickling back to her, a spear of molten lava through the ice; **_you will be reborn from the fire...like a phoenix from the ashes. Your power will be unbridled, sending terror into the souls of the weak._**

 _My sisters..._ that water surged against the heat, through the void of darkness that surrounded them. _Where will they go?_

 ** _They will return..._** he whispered in her ear, burning through her mind. **_They will return to the dregs from which they were created._**

The image of the Ancestor’s laboratory flashed through her mind, to the vial of forbidden black liquid. Her eyes opened wide and all the calm washed away from her. There was something in her throat, that ripped her insides raw and she felt her heart wrench like a vice in her chest. 

“ _No_ ,” she breathed into the abyss. “ _You can’t.”_

There was a hiss of a blaze growing stronger, roaring out of control. 

**_I? I will not be responsible for what shall befall them..._ **

The tears formed in her eyes, but for once she did not curse the threads of her still existing weakness. She let them roll down her cheeks, her breath caught in her throat, the horror filling her whole.

**_It will be you, sweet Blossom. It will all be you._ **

“ _No..._ ” she whimpered as the crackling fire grew louder and she fell down to her knees. “ _Please no...”_

She curled up tighter, as the shadows of the void swept around her body, leaving her crying and alone in that wide expanse of nothing.

_“Please no. Oh God, please no.”_

But she only heard the silence in cold, empty reply.


End file.
